LIB Dems on Cambridgeshire County Council today pledged to re-open the Wisbech to March rail line and create an hourly service to Cambridge.

The party’s proposals will be aired on Tuesday at Shire Hall when they present their ‘alternative’ budget to the county council.

“The people of Wisbech have been ignored for too long by the Tories running the county council,” said Lib Dem Leader, Councillor Kilian Bourke.

“Transport links to the town are poor, people are struggling to find work and bored teenagers are causing trouble. It is time more action was taken to solve these problems and our alternative budget aims to do just that.”

“We would open the Wisbech line, ensure that the town had the fastest broadband outside Cambridge, and invest in extra teachers in classrooms and PCSO’s on the streets, to improve education and community safety. These targeted extra investments, taken together, would make a real difference.”

He said Lib Dems propose to improve education in the town by attracting and keeping more good young teachers by bringing back an hourly train service to Cambridge and connections to Peterborough and London by reopening the railway line for passengers and freight.

He also promised “an extra �250 per year for every pupil who receives free school meals in two of the Wisbech area’s poorest primary schools allowing these schools to employ more teachers, cut class sizes and buy more books.”

The Lib Dems would also invest in the youth service “to reduce the number of bored teenagers resorting to anti-social behaviour or crime and being a bad influence on their classmates in and out of school.”

On jobs the Lib Dems said they would provide young people just out of school with the means to get to job interviews “and a new job when they get one. This would break the cycle where you are repeatedly excluded from getting work by the cost and difficulty of getting to interviews or a new job.”

Councillo Kevin Wilkins, Shadow Cabinet Member for Planning, Enterprise and Environment, said : “There is much that can be done to improve the life of people living in Wisbech, but for too long they have been treated as the poor relations to others elsewhere in Cambridgeshire.

“The Lib Dems would both deal with the problems faced by Wisbech and make sure residents and employers are better able to create jobs and get jobs than they can now.”

“And Wisbech’s schools would get more money from the Lib Dems and would find it easier to keep good teachers.”